Author
Topic: Discordians Anonymous (Read 11212 times)

I don't really know how I got wrapped up in all of this. There was a time when I was just another bored kid, a bored Army brat to be precise, who would read anything for an intellectual kick. Fiction, occult literature, pseudo-occult literature that's dumbed down for typical teenagers and other soft-headed types, and eventually the nigh infinite supply of jokes and weird crap known as the Internet.

When all your friends are "new friends" and you know they'll be gone in a few years at most, you start to get desperate, you know? Without the craziness of hanging out with buddies to satisfy your need for novelty and excitement, you look to other sources... and I found them. Internet humor sites, mainly, but somewhere deep in the underbelly of the Weird, I found something different. Something called Discordianism.

"A joke disguised as a religion, or a religion disguised as a joke" was the soundbite description I got. "Perfect!" I thought. I'm not religious, and the guys who wrote this silly holy book, the Principia Discordia, seem to have a sense of humor that parallels mine, so why not mess around by pretending to be a Discordian?

Here's the thing, though: pretending to be a Discordian and actually being a Discordian are not all that different. Some would probably tell you that there's no difference there at all. That's how it draws you in, see. First you think that you're just part of a ridiculous joke, and then you get so into the joke it seems real, but then it's a joke again, and then Reality is the joke and you forget where the hell you were going with this nonsense in the first place.

Once I found that there were active Discordian communities online, I started hanging out with them. Swapped a few jokes and ideas, listened more than I spoke (or rather, read more than I wrote), and the rest, as they say, is the future.

Here's the thing, though: pretending to be a Discordian and actually being a Discordian are not all that different. Some would probably tell you that there's no difference there at all. That's how it draws you in, see. First you think that you're just part of a ridiculous joke, and then you get so into the joke it seems real, but then it's a joke again, and then Reality is the joke and you forget where the hell you were going with this nonsense in the first place.

The only thing I'd add to this is that PD (I haven't spent much/any time on any other Discordian sites) kind of ruins you, as when you inevitably venture back to old internet haunts or find new ones, you see with a new clarity the ways in which almost everyone is stuck in the web of their own ideologies and they don't even notice the spiders slip slip slipping them the pills. But then you look for your own webs and you don't see them. Although you know that, logically, there's a very high chance that they're there.

So for a while it's slightly less creepy to hang out with the people who know we're all caught in webs we can't see, than the people who are entirely oblivious of it all. Because as you say, that reality becomes the new joke and that's how we deal.

"Get offa me, you freaks! This is not North Korea. No. This is America, and I expect to be PAID for that sort of nonsense. In advance. No credit...Cash on the barrelhead or GTFO. I swear to God, there's nothing more annoying than commie perverts who don't understand the intrinsic value of the free market system."

Here's the thing, though: pretending to be a Discordian and actually being a Discordian are not all that different. Some would probably tell you that there's no difference there at all. That's how it draws you in, see. First you think that you're just part of a ridiculous joke, and then you get so into the joke it seems real, but then it's a joke again, and then Reality is the joke and you forget where the hell you were going with this nonsense in the first place.

This part is my favorite, especially the bolded line.

Logged

“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

“All that goodness, with a frozen chicken in the middle.”― Doktor Howl, 2014

Here's the thing, though: pretending to be a Discordian and actually being a Discordian are not all that different. Some would probably tell you that there's no difference there at all. That's how it draws you in, see. First you think that you're just part of a ridiculous joke, and then you get so into the joke it seems real, but then it's a joke again, and then Reality is the joke and you forget where the hell you were going with this nonsense in the first place.

This part is my favorite, especially the bolded line.

Thanks. It came to me as I was writing it, and I think it's the most interesting part too. Because really, where does "pretending to follow a goofball pseudoreligion" end, and "actually following a goofball pseudoreligion" begin? I'm still not sure where I fall in this distinction.

I think I first realized I was a discordian was when I started making stencils of ridiculous things and planning to use them to deface public property. Up until that point I'd considered myself a Armchair Anarchist and a bit of a spiritual wanderer. Never having the nerve to do anything, and never finding a home that fit my outlook on the unknowable. I'd sunk to the deep end of the Web, I trolled pedophiles during the day and mspainted penises onto celebrity pictures at night. It was a nerve racking cycle and I knew it had to end.

So to take my mind off of it I decided I'd try trolling Wikipedia.... Needless to say I one day came to a page that I couldn't explain, it was as if a thousand minds cried out in a pain then got back to whatever they were doing before that. I followed the links and found many amusing stories and jokes, and asked myself "What is this? Is it really a religion built on the bases that everything is chaos?" No one replied because I was talking to myself and since I'm not schizophrenic or something there was no other voices in my head. So I delved further into this and found write something to replace this and it'll be great.